


I, too, shall expire.

by pinstripedJackalope



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Introspection, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Music, Other, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-26 12:14:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20930048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: Just Monty feeling miserable in the cargo hold before the pirates arrive.





	I, too, shall expire.

The boat is rocking, and I rock with it. I can’t help it—lying on the floor with my face pressed to the floorboards doesn’t give me many options. I’ve been feeling a sudden unexpected sympathy for Lockwood and his seasickness as of the last few hours. My stomach is decidedly unmoored and I’m floundering because of it.

“Are you still feeling poorly?” Percy asks, from behind me. He’s settled with his back braced against a barrel, his knees folded along my spine. The pressure is nice but I’m rather grateful my back is to him—if he even came close to my precarious stomach I’m sure I’d spit-up all over him in a display similar to the vomit-fountains the Goblin was most fond of.

I’m meant to respond to his question, I realize a moment later, when he leans forward to place a worried hand on my forehead. I hum what I hope is an adequate answer. 

We should both be sound asleep but I haven’t managed to doze off just yet and he, I suspect, is keeping awake to watch over me. It’s a wretched feeling, I find. Sleepless nights are one of the causes of his fits, he’s mentioned, as well as overbearing heat—the cargo hold is boiling—and noise and crowded spaces and likely anything else I think to say or do, as well. I don’t want to keep him up, not like this—if I were to keep him awake I’d love to do it in a more provocative manner, followed by a long night spent in each others arms. Plenty of fun, with plenty of sleep afterward. In an ideal world, I’d never cause those little creases between his brows that bloom up during whatever stupidity it is I’ve gotten myself into, stupidity such as belladonna poisoning (or not-poisoning, as Felicity keeps reminding me). 

“Monty,” he says now, his fingers growing more insistent on my face. I manage a moan but he’s a persistent bastard, and after a moment I’m forced to unstick myself from the floor like peeling the rind from an orange. I’m about to turn on him and throw up in his lap just for the indignity of disturbing me but he’s already slipping his folded coat under my head and lowering me back down.

I sigh into the fabric. It smells like him, and I try not to think about that in conjunction with my sour stomach. Though really, I shouldn’t be worried, as Percy has never before been an irritation to my stomach—he’s more often been a balm to early mornings where I’ve too much gin in my veins. I don’t know what I fret for, because even on the most hideous of mornings Percy has been by my side making me feel better.

If only it were working now. The rocking of the boat is too sincere—the stuffy air of below decks too clogging. I doze to the feeling of something untethered inside of me.

When I wake again, it’s with a start. The rocking is everpresent, but it seems to have grown somewhat stronger since I was last conscious, and my dear sister has accidentally whacked me about the face with the trim of her dress trying to press herself into the corner.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she says, somewhat short of reprimanding.

“And yet you’ve done it despite yourself,” I respond, somewhat short of mocking.

We are in a weird place, her and I. And me and Percy, as well, if I’m being honest. Honesty doesn’t come naturally to me as it does to some but I’m willing to permit this to cross my mind, especially seeing the state I’m in. Misery upon misery is a state I’m acquainted with, and usually that wouldn’t put a damper on my silver tongue, but with all the strangeness between me and Percy as of late and the lack of our usual requited bickering between my sister and I, I’m feeling just off enough to allow these thoughts.

Thoughts that lead from our current adventure back to that night in Paris, where I nearly gave myself away and was thrust so solidly backwards that I still feel as if I’m reeling. Or is that the sway of the vessel beneath me? I can no longer tell.

“Sit up, you’ll feel less dreadful if you’re the right way around,” Felicity says, as if she’s noticed. She probably has—her eyes are sharp when they’re not rolling back in her skull. With a moan I drag myself to my knees, bending over them with my hands folded behind my neck as if that’ll help ease the nausea. 

It doesn’t.

I’m still so tired, ever so tired, but I know I couldn’t sleep right now if I tried. My mind is vividly awake, spinning within the confines of my skull, and I swallow heavily. Percy must be at the stairs keeping watch, and Felicity is now caught up in reciting some anatomical list from memory under her breath to keep herself occupied. It slips in and out of my hearing as I struggle against myself, until I find that I’m responding to her just to keep myself sane. Not in words—in notes, tones, something that has long escaped my memory as to its origins. 

I’ve gotten to the end—not the end of the song, as far as I remember, but the end to the main verse—and begun again when I hear a shuffle from the far side of the cargo hold. As if on some cue I’m not privy to, Felicity and Percy swap places, Percy settling at my side with a hand resting on the space between my shoulder blades. 

I trail off, swallowing. I’m about to shuffle around again in search of a position better suited to the death I’m sure is coming for me in the form of inhaling my own vomit, but just then a note sounds beside me.

It’s the same note, from the same song, but on Percy’s tongue it sounds so much sweeter than on mine. One note… and then another… slower than I’d been humming before. He’s slowed the tune down from a jaunty, playful melody to something rather soothing, adding extra notes here and there that ring low in the tight, hot space. He continues on until he reaches the same end of the verse that I’d reached, and doubles back for the beginning, changing the key just slightly. The new notes resonate longer, lower, plucking at the strings of my heart, and…

Blame it on the nausea, or the sleeping drug, or the bought of sobs I endured when I first woke from it. Blame it on something other than my desperate need to have that which I’m sure I’ll never have. But as I kneel there, in clothes torn up and dragged through muck and mud, my head spinning and feeling so empty despite the purpose set ahead of us, I can’t help but think about Holland. About Percy and his illness, about the idea of never seeing him again. If I should never hear his fingers dancing on a fiddle ever again… if I should never feel the warmth of his skin… if he should have a fit and choke on his tongue and die… or if he’s taken away from me to suffer in an asylum for the rest of his wretched life… if any of these things come to pass, I know… I know. That I, too, shall expire. 

**Author's Note:**

> ALLDSKSDKKLSLKSDKSD I FELL HARD FOR THIS BOOK. I may or may not post a few more short fics for The Gentleman's Guide, but even if I don't, please know that I'm in love with the story.


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